Rowell Fund for Tibet Awards over $48,000 to Tibetan Projects

Photography training for young Tibetans, township level mapping of Tibetan ethnic regions and a program for newly arrived Tibetan refugee children are among the 9 projects selected by ICT’s Rowell Fund Board of Advisors to receive grants in 2009. This year, the Rowell Fund will award over $48,000 to applicants from both India and the United States carrying out projects throughout Asia in memory of lifelong Tibet supporters, Galen and Barbara Rowell, who died in a plane crash in 2002.

This year’s application pool of over 55 applicants included proposals for projects supporting the preservation of Tibetan culture through photography, cartography, academia, and environmentalism. The top 9 received grants ranging from $1,700 to $7,500. The Board’s selections include an academic treatise on early Himalayans, a translation of Tsering Woeser’s Tibet Update (http://woeser.middle-way.net/) into Tibetan, and the transcription and translations of Tibetan elders’ oral histories.

Jimmy Chin, prominent Chinese-American climber, adventure photographer and a member of the Rowell Fund Advisory Board, said, “It’s exciting to be able to give out grants to such an impressive group of entrepreneurial and dedicated Tibetans this year. I believe we are supporting some very strong and progressive projects that follow in the spirit of Galen and Barbara’s passions and commitments to Tibet.”

Much of this year’s grants were funded by a benefit climb of the Grand Tetons in August 2008 with celebrity guides Conrad Anker, David Breashears and Jimmy Chin. For more information on this summer’s Grand Teton benefit climb (July 25-29), click here or contact Leslie Butterfield at [email protected]

As avid mountaineers and outdoor photographers, Galen and Barbara Rowell helped bring Tibet and the Himalayas into the public eye. Their fund continues this legacy, providing small grants to Tibetan writers, academics, photographers, and conservationists. To learn more about Galen and Barbara Rowell and the background of the Rowell Fund, click here.

This year’s grant recipients include

Yosay Wangdi — $3,613 for her academic narrative of the lives of early Tibetans on the Himalayan frontier

Tenzin Yangchen — $6,900 for her work recording, transcribing, and translating Tibetan elders’ interviews for the Tibet Oral History Project (http://www.tibetoralhistory.org/)

Kunthar Dhondup — $6,663 for his Tibetan translation of blogger Tsering Woeser’s day by day account of the March uprising in her Tibet Update (http://woeser.middle-way.net/)

ICT and the Rowell Fund also wishes to congratulate last year’s grant recipients, whose final written reports provided concrete evidence of impact the Rowell Fund continues to have among Tibetan communities. The advisory board, made up of friends and family of Galen & Barbara, is made up of John Ackerly, Conrad Anker, David Breashears, Jimmy Chin, Bob and Beth Cushman, John Jancik and Terri Baker, Bob Palais, Tony Rowell and Ray and Nicole Rowell Ryan. The Fund is managed by the International Campaign for Tibet.